<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>i know a place by dreamstonite</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29586894">i know a place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamstonite/pseuds/dreamstonite'>dreamstonite</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Square: school/university, Time Shenanigans, and donghyuck jumps to truly astonishing conclusions, and the writer is also kinda dumb, pls forgive he is just a fool in love, there are at least three layers of secrets here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:40:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,998</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29586894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamstonite/pseuds/dreamstonite</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Donghyuck uses the secret room, he does it completely by accident.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Liu Yang Yang</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Challenge #5 — I heard a secret.., THE COLLECTION</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i know a place</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written for challenge #5 of <a href="https://twitter.com/littlewonderfic">a little wonder fest</a> with the theme "i heard a secret..." and for <a href="https://twitter.com/thedreamIab">the dream lab</a>, square: school/university.</p><p>thank you so much to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamyska">kamyska</a> for looking over this and for being awesome in general &lt;3</p><p>hope you all enjoy! please further the hyuckyang agenda if you do :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Donghyuck uses the secret room, he does it completely by accident. </p><p>He arrived on campus early in a final, desperate bid to finish a paper for his Philosophy class at 10:00 am, and he still needs to write at least 1,500 words, but Donghyuck is not panicking<em>.</em> He just needs to find somewhere to sit down and write it in one burst, hopefully alone, hopefully in silence.</p><p>He makes a right and enters the Philosophy building, just to minimize the risk of tardiness, and ducks into the nearest empty room he can find, settling down on the singular chair that he locates in it. His watch reads 8:46 am. On his phone, he sets an alarm for 9:50 am so he has time to print his paper at the bookstore around the corner, and gets to work.</p><p>As he squeezes out every last thought he has about their last lectures on <em>reductionism</em> and <em>P</em><em>latonism</em>, writing a little bit about <em>the open future</em> just for the word count, Donghyuck thinks he’s not going to make it, already passively thinking of possible excuses so his professor won’t do the worst and give him a zero.</p><p>But when the word count hits 2,000 before his alarm goes off, Donghyuck heaves a sigh of relief. He saves his work to a flash drive and clicks the corner of his screen to turn his laptop off, when he sees the time.</p><p>It's still 8:46 am.</p><p>Perhaps his laptop's clock is broken? He pulls his phone out of his pocket, and it also reads 8:46 am. <em> Maybe it's a virus or something, </em>Donghyuck thinks, before promptly panicking.</p><p>He rushes out of the room, and when he glances toward the big wall clock at the end of the hallway, he’s stunned to see that it also reads 8:46 am.</p><p><em> This is so fucking weird, </em>he thinks to himself. There's no way he wrote around 1,500 words in virtually no time at all.</p><p>He makes his way to the bookstore to print the paper, and the cashier's computer also confirms, impossibly, that it's not even 9:00 am yet. Donghyuck’s starting to think his brain hasn’t pulled some sort of delirious joke on him in the process of writing his paper, that this has somehow happened.</p><p>When his professor starts class an hour later, Donghyuck decides that's as much of a confirmation he's going to get, that somehow, time stopped as he wrote his paper and resumed only when he got out of the room.</p><p>He is unable to concentrate for the rest of the class, wondering if he should tell anyone about a discovery he isn’t even entirely sure about yet. It feels too big of a secret to have revealed itself to Donghyuck, who is naturally loud and capable of drawing all the attention in the room to himself, even when he doesn't mean to.</p><p>His professor eyes Donghyuck for a second as he slips his paper on top of the stack. Donghyuck wonders if she knows about the room, since it’s in her home department. He wonders if all the philosophy majors know. What if everyone on campus knows and Donghyuck is the one out of the loop?</p><p>But that can’t be the case, he thinks. If it were, there would certainly be more people waiting to get in the room. But then, what if there were more rooms like this around campus? </p><p>Donghyuck’s head starts to spin. If he starts thinking about it out of the scope of his own life, he may never stop asking questions. And as it is, Donghyuck has enough to worry about. </p><p>He resolves to keep it to himself, for now. If he mentions it to anyone else it will invite more speculation – not to mention accountability – than Donghyuck is ready for.</p><p>However, when the class is dismissed and he walks out of his classroom to see Yangyang waiting for him outside the Philosophy building, his hands on the straps of his backpack and his hair tossed by the gentle breeze, it brings forth an entirely different problem altogether.</p><p>See, Donghyuck has had a bit of experience in keeping a secret from Yangyang, so this should be easy.</p><p>Except, a secret of the preternatural kind is entirely different from a secret that involves <em>being in love with Yangyang for the past five years</em>, so maybe Donghyuck is overestimating himself.</p><p>“Hi,” Yangyang greets when he sees Donghyuck, smiling at Donghyuck like he always does, content, welcoming, and fond, if a little mischievous. Sometimes it’s hard for Donghyuck to look at him when he's smiling this way, and he especially can't bear to look now, when he’s struggling to bear the weight of this discovery along with his goddamn indecision.</p><p>"Hey," Donghyuck responds tentatively, ignoring the intensified thump of his heartbeat.</p><p>“Did you finish your paper in time?” Yangyang asks as they walk away from the building, and how fortunate for Donghyuck that he decided to lead with that.</p><p>“Have I ever missed a deadline?“ he deflects, and Yangyang rolls his eyes, murmuring, "Sure you have, if you count the times you used whining, flattery, or your sheer stubbornness to get an extension."</p><p>Donghyuck laughs nervously. <em>Somehow</em>, he thinks,<em> those were all better methods.</em></p><p>"Hey, don't pretend you haven't benefited from my ways."</p><p>"Doesn't mean I always agree with them. But hey, if the teachers give in, then why not?"</p><p>He can't tell him. Despite being friends with Yangyang for over five years, Donghyuck doesn't know how he'll respond to something like this. Will he even believe him? Incredible, really, that the thought on the forefront of his mind after possibly discovering an anomaly in the fabric of time is the chance that he'll make an embarrassment of himself in front of his best friend and longtime crush, Liu Yangyang.</p><p>"Good job, though. Leave it to you to cram a paper in just an hour,” Yangyang speaks up again when Donghyuck remains silent, clapping his back and believing it so readily that it makes Donghyuck swallow the bile rising in his throat. He hates lying, and he especially hates lying to Yangyang, who always has infinite faith in him even when Donghyuck lets him down, even when he lets himself down.</p><p>Yangyang keeps his arm around Donghyuck’s shoulder as they walk out of the school gates, and Donghyuck makes a conscious effort to keep his breathing even, trying to think of other topics, ones he can actually wrap his head around.</p><p> </p><p>Curiosity makes him go back to the room the very next day, inspecting it more closely this time.</p><p>It has no nameplate, only a regular wooden door that matches all the other ones down the hallway. No windows, either. Glancing down the hallway and seeing no one, Donghyuck steps inside.</p><p>There’s the singular chair, a couple of tables at the back and another table at the front, and a chalkboard. It seems like a room for one-on-one tutorials, which would be really convenient if Donghyuck is right about whatever the room actually is.</p><p>He figures he might as well see if the same thing will happen again while he’s here, so he fishes his speakers out of his backpack. If anything can be a test of time, it’s how long Donghyuck can practice his dance routines – ones he’s learning for the dance club he and Yangyang are in.</p><p>Donghyuck places the chair to the side of the room, sets up the speakers at the back, plays his music, and starts dancing.</p><p>He has five routines to practice, and he does an average of three rounds for each one. By the time Donghyuck practices the fourth, he notices the shift in the room when he almost hits the chair as he does a spin, even after he made sure to set it a good distance away from him. The tables on both ends of the room also seem much too close for comfort. Donghyuck can almost touch the chalkboard if he walks a few steps forward.</p><p>His watch still reads 6:27 pm. This must be the catch, then: time as people know it will stop, but the room has a time limit of its own before it forces the user out.</p><p>Donghyuck isn't particularly keen on staying to find out when that point will be. He slips out the room as quietly as he had entered.</p><p> </p><p>Donghyuck commits to a set of rules. If he’s not going to tell anyone, the only way he can ease his guilt is by not abusing the room, and that essentially boils down to three rules: he will not use it for schoolwork, he will use it for dance practice only when everywhere else is full, and he will use it only out of desperation.</p><p>The room's self-revealing time limit also helps him temper his urges. The second time he used it, he was there for barely two hours in real time before it started closing in on itself. It may offer somewhat of a refuge from the unconquerable pace of real life, but the claustrophobia it induces is enough of a deterrent to keep him from returning any chance he gets.</p><p>He's drifting off to sleep when Yangyang texts him.</p><p><em>hyuckieee</em>, he reads, and Donghyuck sighs. He knows Yangyang gets all cute with him when he wants something, but Donghyuck would be a hypocrite if he called him out; he was guilty of doing the same.</p><p>Plus, Donghyuck doesn't mind a cute Yangyang – cuter than how he normally sees him, anyway.</p><p>
  <em>what do you want. people r trying to sleep here</em>
</p><p>
  <em>play overwatch with me come onnn</em>
</p><p><em>didn't you read what i said? i have an early class tmr</em>, Donghyuck texts as he stands and boots up his computer.</p><p>They end up playing for a couple of hours, talking in between about nothing and everything, like they always do.</p><p>When he tucks himself in that night, Donghyuck thinks about the third rule. His brain obnoxiously tells him he’s probably not a fair arbiter for his own level of desperation, but then he remembers he’s been desperately in love with his best friend for five years.</p><p>Surely that must count for something; an upper limit, if you think about it.</p><p> </p><p>The following month, he uses the room only three other times – a quick lunch when there is virtually no time for it, last minute prep for a presentation, and another dance practice, when all of the practice rooms are full.</p><p>On some level, Donghyuck knows why he's limiting himself to these simple, necessary acts. It's not only because he's scared of testing the limits of the room, but because he knows it may aggravate his hubris. He knows what can happen if he gives in to his reckless urges.</p><p>He almost did, once, with Yangyang. They had been at Donghyuck’s place, slightly buzzed, celebrating the end of freshman year. At one point, they had drawn their faces so close together in shared laughter, that Donghyuck had stared at Yangyang's lips for a moment too long.</p><p>He'll never forget the apprehension in Yangyang’s eyes, the tense set of his shoulders.</p><p>Donghyuck doesn’t want to ruin Yangyang’s life, nor his own, if he can help it. Apart from that, he simply does not have the time nor the patience to ruminate over the endless possibilities this room affords, and anyway, Donghyuck is no philosopher. He is just an ordinary fool in life and in love.</p><p> </p><p>“Donghyuck, I need a favor,” Yangyang says one Thursday evening. The sun has just begun to set, casting an orange glow on Yangyang’s face, making him squint as he turns to Donghyuck.</p><p>“Of course,” he says, automatic, just this side of helpless. “What is it?”</p><p>“Could you make a mixtape for me?”</p><p>Donghyuck cocks his head. “A mixtape? Do you mean on a CD?” It’s an odd request, seeing as they both have Spotify; they've already made and shared so many playlists over the years.</p><p>“Yeah,” Yangyang says, with a hint of shyness in his smile, still looking at Donghyuck.</p><p>“Am I allowed to ask what it’s for?”</p><p>At that, Yangyang averts his gaze, chuckling just as shyly. “It’s for nothing, really. I-,” he starts, but before he can finish his sentence, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and swipes to accept a call. “Hello?”</p><p>Donghyuck faintly hears the tinny sound of his brother’s voice.</p><p>“Shit, I’m late,” Yangyang says, pocketing his phone. “I forgot I have to take over Kun’s shift at the music store.”</p><p>“Wait, what kind of mixtape do you want?”</p><p>“Love songs would be nice, actually,” Yangyang says, quickening his pace but smiling at him all the same. “Ah, thanks, Hyuckie. I really have to go.”</p><p>“When do you want it by?”</p><p>“However soon you can finish it! See you later,” he says, leaving Donghyuck behind him.</p><p>“See you later.”</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t intend to use the room so he can make the mixtape. He can do that in the comfort of his bedroom, where God knows he’s spent enough time listening to love songs, thinking about Yangyang. It’s an exercise he indulges in quite often for as long as he continues to be a coward and shelve his feelings deep in the recesses of his heart, deep enough where even Yangyang couldn’t reach.</p><p>Donghyuck opens the door and walks to the chair, almost comforting in its similar state of solitude. He sags down to it and buries his face in his hands, feeling the first pinpricks of tears.</p><p><em> Love songs. </em>Why else would he want a love-themed mixtape, if not for some sort of romantic gesture?</p><p>Donghyuck is so tired. He knows he might be jumping to assumptions, but he can’t help it. He’s been keeping so much to himself lately, and he won’t be able to bear it if Yangyang is doing the same, however inadvertently.</p><p>So he just cries, overwhelmed with the weight of everything he’s been holding over the years – all the white lies, the cut-off borderline romantic remarks, declarations he thought would be better kept under lock and key, this massive secret permanently lodged in his sternum, never to be voiced out. He expels them all through the steady stream of salty water down his cheeks.</p><p>Sometime later, when he notices the subtle change in distance from his chair to the chalkboard, he walks out the room and goes home. He finishes the mixtape in the same night.</p><p> </p><p>The next day, he carries the mixtape in his backpack, cushioned in a velvet bag he copped from a nearby store. It doesn't dig into his back but he feels the weight of it, almost like it's taken on some of the dread he’s feeling.</p><p>When he sees Yangyang waiting for him after his Philosophy class, Donghyuck fishes the mixtape out of his bag before making his way down the steps. Yangyang lights up as he sees him descend, and it's so stupid, how it still stirs up butterflies in Donghyuck's stomach. He probably just wants the damn CD.</p><p>But when he stops in front of him, Yangyang doesn't take it immediately, just smiles wider at him. "You really did it, damn.”</p><p>Donghyuck takes slight offense. "Why wouldn't I?"</p><p>"You looked pretty sullen about it,” Yangyang says, biting his lip.</p><p>"Yeah,” Donghyuck just wants him to take it, to be honest, but he keeps talking. “Because, you know, if you wanted to woo someone, I just think you should be the one putting in the effor-" he stops mid-sentence when Yangyang starts laughing uncontrollably.</p><p>"<em>Woo someone?</em> You're crazy, Hyuckie," Yangyang says, but after a second, the mirth disappears in his eyes.</p><p>Worry settles in Donghyuck's stomach. "What's wrong?"</p><p>"Nothing," Yangyang smiles sadly. "It's just... never mind," he says, walking ahead of him and keeping his head down as he turns the mixtape over in his hands.</p><p>Donghyuck catches up to him. "I'm sorry for what I said, but you know you can tell me anything, so why aren’t you talking about this?”</p><p>Yangyang turns to him, then, sighing as he maintains a small, almost self-deprecating smile. His eyes are sadder than Donghyuck has ever seen them. "Hyuckie, isn't it obvious by now?"</p><p>Donghyuck gulps. "What is?"</p><p>"I like you," Yangyang says quietly, but with so much earnestness that Donghyuck's heart slams against his ribcage. "I always have."</p><p>"<em>What?</em>"</p><p>"Yeah, it's so dumb really, Kun found a walkman at home and I teased him when he started using it because<em> way to live up to your age, hyung-</em>"</p><p>Yangyang keeps talking as if Donghyuck's world hasn't completely spun out of its axis. "-Until he started acquiring all these old CDs, and it's kinda cool actually, so I wanted to try it for myself. Don't have a PC at home and I don’t know how to burn a CD, so I asked you. And I wanted to keep listening to your music, like I always do, anyway. I like your music. I like everything about you." Yangyang is rambling, and it's the most excellent string of sentences, the most glorious moment of Donghyuck's life.</p><p>He can't help himself, doesn't care that they're in the middle of a brick road where at least three main buildings converge – he pulls Yangyang close, holding him by the nape, laughing in exhilaration. "Yangyang, I like you too."</p><p>And suddenly Donghyuck's world is righted again when Yangyang breaks out into the most brilliant smile. “You do?”</p><p>“Just for all of the past five years.”</p><p>And Yangyang pulls him even closer by his hips, but just then the bell rings, and dozens of students file out of the buildings surrounding them. Yangyang huffs, smiling as his cheeks turn pink. "I really wanted to kiss you just now."</p><p>A bulb lights up in Donghyuck's head.</p><p>He can be selfish, just this once. They’ll have all the time in the world without it, anyway.</p><p>"I know a place."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks so much for giving this lil fic a try &lt;3 if you enjoyed it, please let me know through kudos and comments!</p><p>talk to me on <a href="https://twitter.com/verseetwo">twitter</a> :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>